A protester shows his support for a petition to give Johnson County voters a chance to tell county officials how they feel about high-volume oil and gas drilling at the Illinois state capitol in Springfield last week. (Seth Perlman, Associated Press)

By Jennifer DigginsGuest Commentary

In early November, voters in seven communities in Colorado and Ohio were asked to ban hydraulic fracturing. A ban succeeded in five out of seven communities.

Out-of-state opposition groups misled voters to believe fracking contaminates water aquifers, increases air pollution and sacrifices public health. The outcome is a wake-up call for any American who values affordable energy, energy security and a cleaner environment.

If you think about the question from an objective and scientific standpoint, these bans never should have been approved. Scientific review and state and federal regulators have found shale gas production to be safe. Even Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy said, “there’s nothing inherently dangerous in fracking.”

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has reiterated that sentiment, stating, “I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.”Read more…

Workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado, in March. (Brennan Linsley, AP File)

Richard P. MignognaGuest Commentary

On Election Day on Nov. 5, voters in four Colorado cities — Boulder, Lafayette, Fort Collins and Broomfield — weighed in on whether or not to allow hydraulic fracturing in their communities.

Measures to ban “fracking” passed easily in the first three. The Broomfield proposition is under a mandatory recount because of the close vote count. As is well known by now, the state regards the regulation of drilling activities as its sole domain and has filed suit over an earlier fracking restriction in Longmont. Thus far, there is no indication of what action the state may take this time around.

It has been well documented that the state and nation as a whole have benefited immensely from new oil and gas extraction technologies. The U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas and, thanks to new production in shale oil and shale gas, is on a path to become a net energy exporter in a few short years — something that would have been unthinkable not long ago.Read more…

An air quality specialist of EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. is checking the pollution-control devices near Erie. EnCana is trying to reduce its contributions to the metro area’s smog problem through some experimental practices. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

By Eva J. Henry and Charles “Chaz” TedescoGuest Commentary

As elected officials, we take very seriously our obligation to protect the health and welfare of the residents in our communities. That means trying to create a robust economy, ensuring public safety and trying to make sure our air is safe to breathe.

Vitally important negotiations are going on between staff of the state health department, the oil and gas industry, conservationists and other interested parties that will dramatically impact the quality of the air we breathe. These negotiations will determine how much air pollution the oil and gas industry can emit.

In keeping with Gov. John Hickenlooper’s proclamation that he wants to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation, it only follows that our state should have the strongest rules in the U.S.Read more…

A worker uses hand signals to communicate with a co-worker over the sound of massive pumps at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. hydraulic fracturing and extraction site, outside Rifle, in western Colorado, in March 2013. (Brennan Linsley, Associated Press)

By Diane BanningGuest Commentary

On Nov. 5, in the few minutes it takes to punch a ballot, the residents of several Northern Colorado cities will decide whether to place the livelihoods of more than 100,000 oil and gas workers, and those of their families, in jeopardy. My family is one of them. I am a private person, but with my family’s future at stake, I must speak out.

I started working in oil and gas 25 years ago. But when the industry struggled in 1999, I lost my job. Fortunately, I could fall back on my spouse’s income and focus on raising our two young daughters.

But six years ago, things changed dramatically and my life was in crisis. I became a single mother to two teenage girls. I was deep in debt without health insurance. I needed to find a good job, and quickly. I was terrified. Despite my years away from the workforce, an oil and gas company hired me. I began to climb out of debt and save for college for my daughters.

An electronic technician at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden holds a solar cell wafer. A solar cell from GE’s PrimeStar Solar in Arvada that was tested in the lab set a new efficiency record in 2012. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

By Paul J. Kern and Conor KinkeadGuest Commentary

Energy efficiency is having a bipartisan moment, and Colorado is a part of it.

Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, recently joined forces with a Democrat from Vermont to propose a bill that would help make government operations more energy efficient. In June, Colorado’s senior senator — Mark Udall, a Democrat — paired with a Republican from Maine to introduce a bill that would boost energy efficiency in schools. Soon, Congress is expected to consider an energy efficiency bill sponsored by a New Hampshire Democrat and an Ohio Republican.

As veterans of wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, we support making our nation more energy efficient. A more efficient America is a stronger America, and that’s good for our economy, our national security, and our country’s standing in the world.Read more…

Comments Off on Energy efficiency good for Colorado, America’s standing in the world

A small crowd attended a concert and rally against fracking in Denver’s Civic Center Park in October 2012. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)

By Xiuhtezcatl MartinezGuest Commentary

I am a 13-year-old boy from the Aztec tradition and I have doing environmental activism since a young age. My first public speaking engagement was seven years ago, at a local climate change rally. I began speaking out on issues that are directly going to determine the kind of world we the youth are going to be left with, because I started learning facts about our environmental and climate crises.

I had been giving presentations in schools on these issues for the last several years when I learned about fracking and started uncovering the disastrous effects it was having on our health, the water, the air, and our community. I did hours of research, and reviewed many many studies about the direct hidden impacts of fracking in our community. So I decided I wanted to educate my peers on fracking by giving a multimedia presentation called “The Inconvenient Proof.”

I was invited to do a fracking presentation for two classes of about 200 middle school kids total in Evergreen. The students were all very excited and participated by asking questions and joining us on a song called “What the Frack.”Read more…

Americans everywhere have grown to rely on all the wonderful things energy provides them. From powering our laptops and cell phones to keeping us cool in the summertime, we love what energy does for us. It’s a fact that fossil fuels — our dominant energy supplier — make our lives better.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are unaware of how our energy is produced, and don’t think about how electricity arrived at their light switch or the wall outlet. This disconnect created between producers and consumers has led to a lack of basic information about the risks and benefits of energy production. Broadening that disconnect are false accusations and misleading information about how oil and natural gas is produced. Those with radical views often gain attention through sensational claims and dominate the public dialogue. Admittedly, the oil and natural gas industry needs to do a better job explaining the process and engaging the public.

Knowing that, Western Energy Alliance launched a comprehensive public opinion research study to better understand what Americans voters think about our industry, the products we produce and how we produce them. Our objectives were rather straight forward as we hired a polling firm to survey 1,000 voters to find out what they know about energy development and regulations currently in place to protect their health and safety. With the accusations lobbed at our industry nearly every day, the positive support we found surprised even us.Read more…

As an elected member of a rural electric cooperative board for the last eight years, I recently “stepped out of line.” Reaching a tipping point with our questionable use of renewable energy revenue, I began chronicling rural electric cooperatives’ financial and environmental half-truths on my blog, The Energy Critic.

The latest misinformation campaign opposes Senate Bill 252, which would require Tri-State Generation — the energy supplier of Colorado’s rural electric cooperatives — to obtain 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Framing it as a “war on rural Colorado,” Tri-State and CREA, the lobbying arm of Colorado’s rural electric cooperatives, are blitzing the media with tired and unsupported arguments that it’ll cost us billions.

Don’t be fooled: They claimed very much the same during the debate over Amendment 37 in 2004 (requiring 10 percent renewable energy), yet those claims haven’t come to pass. To the contrary, our current rate pressures mostly result from rising coal costs.Read more…

The state legislative session has ended, with oil and gas drilling impacts on our communities still largely unaddressed — in no small part due to the active resistance of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration. Even more concerning, the Governor continues to actively undermine the efforts of local governments to respond to the growing citizen outcry against fracking and other industrial activities in their neighborhoods.

For example, last year the governor sued the city of Longmont, where I was city manager for 19 years, for adopting local oil and gas rules to protect its citizens. While I appreciate Gov. Hickenlooper’s characterization of the lawsuit as “a last resort,” I want to explain why Longmont’s rules are legal and make good common sense.

Longmont didn’t take the task of adopting new oil and gas rules lightly. The City Council acted because state rules under the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) were insufficient to protect our community. The council carefully crafted an ordinance that would safeguard the health and welfare of Longmont citizens and promote industry accountability and responsibility. Working with its most active oil and gas company, the city negotiated an operator agreement that went beyond COGCC requirements. Notably, while the governor sued Longmont for its new rules, the local oil and gas operator did not.

Faced with a flood of cheap solar panels from China, Golden-based researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory went dark.

As The Denver Post’s Mark Jaffe reports, the researchers have developed a process, called “dark solar,” to manufacture the silicon panels with trillions of tiny holes – holes that allow the panels to absorb so much light that only 2 percent of the sun’s rays are reflected, significantly less than the 7 percent that is the industry standard.

NREL has licensed the process, known as “dark solar,” to Red Bank, N.J.-based Natcore Technology Inc., which is combining the technique it with its own low-cost solar-cell-manufacturing process.

U.S. solar-panel makers have seen prices drop more than 50 percent over the past five years because of cheap Chinese imports. The hope is that innovations like “dark solar” can give our products an edge in the marketplace.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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The idea log The Denver Post editorial board shares commentary and opinion on issues of interest to Coloradans.